I've long been a Linux 'dabbler', but some months ago decided to migrate across, and Sabayon was my distro of choice. Please note that I'm not 'command-line happy'.

I built a box, initially running 5.2, then 5.3, however the MoBo failed which corrupted the install. Since then I have built 2 different systems, both based on new MoBos, re-using the processor, RAM, sound & graphics cards, DVD drives etc, but with new hard drives. In neither case have I managed to get Sabayon (5.3 X64 and i586 and 5.4) to install properly, although I can seem to install almost any other distro (I've had Linux Mint, PCLinuxOS, openSUSE, Fedora13 and 14 all running happily at various times) and I'm using openSUSE 11.3 at present.

I've read through a couple of pages of the forum and found one or 2 references to issues with optical drive issues, so last night I swapped in a more recent drive, but to no avail. Note that I have used the Sabayon 5.3 DVD previously in a successful install, although it took several attempts before anaconda managed to format and partition the drive without crashing.

The symptoms are as follows: I can boot from the live CD, and the live environment appears to work normally (I can surf, open office documents etc). However when I click on the 'install' icon I get the bouncing cursor for a minute or so, but the program doesn't visibly start on the desktop. Sometime clicking a second time will open a window and sometimes not. If the installer does start then it is slow to find the available hard discs, and if I do manage to get as far as trying to partition and format then it always crashes. If I select graphical install from the boot options menu sometimes the installer will start but crash at partitioning and format, other times I just get the ONE desktop and nothing else.

Now I appreciate there are many variables here, but the weird thing is that every other distro I try seems to go in fine. I have also used one of these DVDs previously to create a working install.

After posting last I went back and tried an install of 5.2 - went in perfectly first time with the earlier installer from the live desktop.

I then re-attempted installing 5.4. First try the cursor showed that the software was trying to run, and I got the bouncing CD animation, which eventually stopped with no GUI. I tried it a second time, and as I'd observed a few times before, it started this time, but got stuck trying to find the hard drives (gave up after 10 min).

So I opened up Yakuake and started the liveinstaller from there, which (slowly) took me through the full GUI install. I told it to replace the existing linux system on sda, and it formatted the partitions and installed fine. I now have a working Sabayon 5.4 system.

So thanks for your help on this. I'd guess that the problem is 'fixed' though not exactly solved, but that doesn't matter in a sense because the next version will be along soon with it's own characteristics. I really like the KDE 5.4 desktop, and have added some of my preferred tools (DigiKam, Opera, Thunderbird, Audacity) and it's crisp and responsive.